by Tom Sheridan
The Mustang steamrolled the rolling hills of the Parkway. Forest lining both sides. As Franco passed the PNC Bank Arts Center, he reminisced about when it was The Garden State Arts Center. The place where him and Joey saw George Thorogood back in high school. When the inebriated underagers outdid the Bad to the Bone headliner and got kicked out for fighting.
Ten more miles south, the sun shone into the Stang. Warmed Franco’s forearms and foretold of spring. The blue bomber had an extra spark as it dashed past Asbury Park. Past Bricktown toll booths. Past signs for Seaside Heights. All while its driver dreamed of Julie. Still in love with a Jersey girl as he listened to “Jersey Girl.”
The Mustang funneled from four lanes near Woodbridge to three lanes near the Arts Center then to two lanes as it tore through mile markers 70-something, 60-something, and 50-something. The monotonous mile markers that told you one-tenth at a time exactly how far you were from Cape May. The southern tip of Jersey. The northern end of the Parkway atop Jersey clocked in at mile 174. Woodbridge at mile 129. Franco’s personal fave, Seaside Heights, illed at 82.
Below Exit 82, South Jersey might as well have been the South. The barren pines of the Pine Barrens haunted the highway. The area’s population apocalyptic. Just a scattering of Phillies phans too phar phrom New York. The demographic divide further accentuated by the Southern accents. South Jersey, after all, dipped below the Mason-Dixon. Dead west was Virginia. As was West Virginia. And Cape May, if you may, was farther south than Bullittsville, Kentucky. The Confederate Monument at Finns Point the finishing touch of the only Union state to make the unpopular choice. Of never giving Lincoln the popular vote.
The Mustang made it out of the 70-60-50-something markers. Franco looked forward to the 40s. The Parkway miles, not the drinks. (Although he had liked those, too. Back in the day. Drinking 40 ounces to freedom listening to 40oz. to Freedom.) Emerging from the sticks of Jersey was a marshland of saltwater tributaries cutting through swaths of brush. A marshland that, hundreds of years ago, musta been what the Woodbridge-to-Newark stretch looked like. While Franco’s stomping grounds developed into an interconnected organism of bridges, factories, and oil tanks—all with a sheen of rust that suggested it had risen right from the muck—the 40s were rather undeveloped. Franco envied the allure of the boater casting his lure. Envied the headphoned boy on the bridge who bobbed as he watched his bobber. Envied the couple just sittin on a dock of Great Bay.
As Franco was just wastin time idealizing their lives, the skyline had snuck up on him. Always his cue to play “Atlantic City.” This day was no different. Although the song took on a much different meaning this go-around. The song used to be a pump-it-till-the-speakers-popped gambling anthem for Young Franco and Joey. Back when the 19-year-olds, back in 1994, would floor it to the shore.
Inside the T——, they’d get drunk on Jack n Coke as they blackjacked n joked. A desperate city more than happy to let the kids sitty. A wise move as the two often left without their loot.
They’d play “Atlantic City” once more with the skyline in their rearview. Not so loud the second go-around. It turned into a soothing song as they’d (only half-jokingly) sing to each other. The 6 am sun would continue the soothing. Along with another couple. Just sittin on a dock of Great Bay.
Then there were the one-day getaways with Julie. After thirty days of diapers. Thirty days of middle of the night needs. Thirty days of Julie nursing a baby in one arm and reading a school book in the other. Thirty days of Franco down the docks only to come home to a two-year-old so temperamental. Praying he’d only temporarily gone mental. Thirty days of saving up a lil down payment for their own piece of pavement. In the meantime living with Julie’s mother. Thirty days of paying the old lady rent, listening to her vent, wondering where their lives went. Thirty days of watching their friends do whatever the fuck they wanted. Living rent-free with Mom and D. Bullshit jobs easy as ABC. Then Franco and Julie’s one day. To get faded with fake IDs. To do some rooftop drinkin n smokin in Hoboken. Franco would suck a cigar and sip an old fashioned as if he were Hoboken’s hometown hero himself. Their one day to meddle through the Meadowlands and scalp some Devils nose bleeds. Then watch The Polish Hammer make someone’s nose bleed. Their one night to go clubbing at Hunka Bunka. Nights of X n white hot sex. Their one day to go to Monmouth track and bet on some ponies. Then mosh at the Stone Pony. Or to try some grapes off the vine in Vineland. When Franco would whine all the way to the winery. It looks like a refinery! We coulda stayed in Woodbridge. Then he’d have a few glasses. Slow his nerves to molasses. All along these stops, the two would get glassy-eyed only to miss their baby’s eyes. The big browns that seemed to have a light on behind them. Thirty days of looking forward to leaving him. Then spending their one day bereaving him. The way he’d raise his armpit, inviting you in for a tickle. Only to shut it and giggle. The way Julie tried to teach him for months to say “Mama.” Yet his first word was “Dada.” The way he was handsomer than Franco and smarter than Julie. The way that for all their bitching and moaning and all of his bitching and moaning, he was Julie’s “sweetest pea she ever did see.” And Franco’s “main man.” Toddler T would respond to Franco’s sentiment by pointing to his own chest then to Franco’s. To his own. Then to Franco’s. To his own. Then to Franco’s.
Of all those one-day getaways, AC was Franco and Julie’s favorite. They’d bomb on the Expressway. To the bomb city across the bay. Franco would track the casino skyline from left to right. The towering Taj showboating next to the Showboat. Then the Sands sticking out of the sand. The casino run ceasing around Caesar’s. With the last stop The Trop. All as Franco crooned Bruce’s classic tune.
Franco would treat Julie to strip steaks off the strip. In a cash-only hole in the wall only a goodfella could find. Then they’d stroll the boardwalk. Pop in the Taj and let the dice flow. Like they were Ashanti and Fat Joe. And when the night was done. Hit the hot tub like Pun. Sip champagne bubbles. And forget all their troubles.
The morning hangover was exacerbated by having to get back for baby boy. Franco would get up first. Make Julie a cup a cawfee. Watch her sit up and sip. The cold lines from “Atlantic City” at the tip of his lips.
Then there were the AC trips Franco enjoyed even more. The fledgling fighter’s first fights. When he rolled with both Js. One rolling Js. The other helping him smoke them. Franco meanwhile clean as a whistle. Ready for the ref’s whistle.
Franco so thoroughly mopped up the first few amateurs that the hotel staff had to mop up after each one. Franco took one of his main lessons from the streets—get the guy on the ground—and turned it into a signature ground-and-pound strategy. Not that he didn’t have any struggles. The first Jiu-Jitsu opponent he faced had attempted so many guillotines, Franco was sure he was French. But Franco persisted and bought Jiu-Jitsu lessons of his own with the $500 purse. Crushed Julie’s dream of a Louis Vuitton purse. Yet another Frenchman who tried to put Franco in a guillotine. (BTW it was a December fight and it was less than the $600 required for an employer to file a 1099 on an independent contractor. So keep it on the DL if you don’t mind.)
Franco was not only earning money but also a rep. He was a fan favorite in AC. A Jersey boy who fought like the state. Scrappy. Relentless. Carried his pride no matter the opinion outside.
It was around those early fights in AC that Joey Yo, high on vodka and Vicodin (the latter prescribed to Franco for post-fight injuries and promptly passed to Joey), came up with the nickname. The Bunns Lane Brawler, yo! It was perfect. It repped where Franco was from and how he fought. It also took the negative stereotype around town—“BLB” for Bunns Lane Boy—and spun it into something positive. And to top it all off, the nickname was kinda funny. A play on the clownish wrestler, the Brooklyn Brawler. Only Franco wasn’t fooling around. He promoted Joey Yo from boxing coach slash corner man to boxing coach slash corner man slash hype man. Kordell Stewart had nothing on Joey. “The Bunns Lane Brawler” was soon added to the flye
rs for all of Franco’s fights. Fights Franco couldn’t wait to get to. Pedal to the floor in his Air Max as he pumped “Atlantic City” to the max. Singing those opening lines about a rumble. As he got ready to rumble.
Those fight trips were the only trips where Franco still saw the optimism of “Atlantic City” on the way home. As the tune played, he’d dream of turning it all around. He’d dream of dissolving his debts to The Man and absolving his allegiance to The Frog. He’d dream of a future as a big-time fighter and a first-class father. Taking the lyrics to heart as the casino skyline lingered in his rearview.
It was only on this latest trip for The Frog that Franco realized how bleak the song was. And here Franco was living the bleakest lines of all. About a guy out of work. About to do dirt. Even worse, Franco realized that those other lines, the ones he had put so much hope in, were… What was that word Lane loved to use? Fuck. Shoulda paid more attention in school. Oh wait. The word Robin Williams uses in Good Will Hunting. Yeah, that’s it… Ironical. The realization hit Franco between the eyes like a pop from The Prince.
Franco turned off the tune. Turned off the Expressway well before AC. He double-checked the directions The Frog wrote on the back of a White Castle napkin. Franco was in the right spot. In industrial outskirts. Just like the ones he was always eager to get away from on trips to AC. Only this time he was far from the skyline. On the other side of town. Atlantic Shitty.
The Mustang popped along a potholed road like a militia mustang on cobblestone. Its rider concerned about the fort up ahead. An industrial garage bolstered by a fleet of eighteen-wheelers. A Confederate stronghold fixin to hold the Mason-Dixon. Franco a visiting Yankee. And not the kind he dreamed of as a boy. A Yankee who now dreamed of turning his pony around, tucking in both their tails, and heading home. But his general wouldn’t grant a pardon. So Franco parked his pony. And marched on in to Confederate quarters.
Franco sat in the Southern general’s office. Nothing he hadn’t seen up the docks. The grease-smudged phone. The files and paperwork. Flypaper that didn’t work. Shelves of tools. A cracked window that let in the cold. Airing out the mold.
Two Cane Corsos barked and jumped at the door.
Till their master heeled them to the floor.
The giant then had to lower himself just to enter the room. The archway his archnemesis. Yogi. The bear. The biiig bear. Forget Joey Yo. This guy was Big Show big. Like Franco could rear naked choke him for three weeks to no avail big. So big, Franco stood up to greet him…then tried to stand up again. Franco shook Yogi’s ham hock of a hand like he was shaking hands with a gloved Lou Gehrig. Guy made a babe out of Babe Ruth. The .45 sacked in Franco’s sacrum suddenly felt good.
The two men sat across from each other. “Fighter?” asked Franco as he nodded to Yogi’s oversized knuckles.
Yogi nodded. His overgrown hair shook.
“Heavyweigh—” began Franco.
“Super heavyweight,” croaked the man from deep within his belly.
“I fight—”
“You’re not here to discuss fighting.”
“You owe twenty large,” said Franco without flinching.
“I doubled down on the Flyers. Left it on The Frog’s voicemail.”
Franco shifted in his seat. The Frog had left that part out. Assuming it was true. Franco put the probability at 80 percent. Still. “We don’t take voicemail bets,” informed Franco.
“That’s not how The Frog worked it with me.”
“You have an out. Just give us Arturo.”
Yogi stroked his black beard like he was Blackbeard. Pondered the plank for the Yank. “Sure. Soon as you serve me some frog legs.”
Point taken. Why the fuck did Franco think it would be so fuckin easy to come down here and get Yogi to give up his guy? Oh right. Cuz The Frog told him it would. But bring the gun just in case. When Franco had asked The Frog if this Yogi guy would be trouble, The Frog turned on the charm. Have you ever met a guy that gave you trouble? Huh, tough guy? Then gave Franco one of those friendly slaps to the face. Franco couldn’t think of a guy that gave him trouble at the time of The Frog’s rhetorical retort. He could suddenly think of two.
“All due respect—” Franco began.
Yogi belly laughed. “You boys and your sayings. You can say anything as long as you put ‘All due respect’ in front of it, right?” Yogi stood up. Ready to give Boo-Boo a boo-boo. “All due respect, I’m not paying you. All due respect, I’m not gonna give you Arturo. All due respect, I’m gonna give you to Arturo.” Yogi yanked the Yank from his seat. “In the back of a meat truck.”
Franco tore away—his t-shirt tore away. He crashed to the floor. His gun slid to the door. Franco went for it—Yogi blasted him with a knee to the diaphragm. As if he had Franco’s weakness diagrammed. Franco plowed into a shelf. The big man attacked like a hammerhead—until Franco took a hammer to his head.
The big man went down. Right on top of Franco. Half-conscious and fully focused on choking Franco out. There was a reason the fight game had weight classes. Franco had enough trouble tangling with Bobby Brazil. This guy was the size of Brazil. Franco wondered if that would be his last thought on Earth as Yogi choked him out.
Yogi crushed Franco’s windpipe with a single paw. His other pawed for the gun on the gum-stained tile. The bear then proved himself homo sapien after all as his able appendages wrapped around the handle of the gun. His index fingered the trigger. He pressed the gun to Franco’s forehead. BLAM!
Franco figured the shot deafened his ears in his final millisecond moments. He didn’t hear a loud bang. Just a thud. Followed by another thud. Yogi had keeled over. What the fuck? Franco thought he was in The Twilight Zone. Thought that he was dead and all that science fiction shit turned out to be true. Different dimensions and all that. His new existence was so warped that T stood over him. Holding a shovel. As if T had just dug his dad out of a grave and into a new life.
Because he did. Back on Bunns Lane a couple hours before, when little T decided that he was ready for the big time, he had snuck into Franco’s trunk. Tucked a sock into the socket. Latch atchually. Then hatched out of it and waddled over to the office window. Like a baby bird perusing for his parent. Like in that Dr. Seuss book Franco would read to toddler T.
Teen T’s heart raced a hundred miles an hour. Half nervous, half excited as he rambled bits and pieces of the backstory to the flustered Franco.
“What the fuck!” choked Franco.
TJ shrugged with the shovel. “Well, the hammer didn’t get it done.” T looked down at Yogi. Looked at his shovel. At Yogi. At his shovel. T put the back of his hand under Yogi’s nose. “Don’t worry. He’s not dead.”
“What the fuck!” Only this time it wasn’t Franco. It was a trucker in a trucker hat. And aviator sunglasses. Ready to kick the Yanks’ asses.
“Come on!” TJ ran to the window.
Franco tucked the gun and tucked through the window. The two ran off like Romeo and Juliet avoiding the wrath of the Montagues. Or was it the Capulets? Franco made a note to ask T later.
The Yankees ran for their pony parked outside the Southern stronghold. Under direct attack launched by the two Cane Corsos that had launched out the window behind them. Franco and T hopped in their horse. Rolled up their windows as the barking dogs’ snouts snipped at them.
The Stang’s tires spun and spit gravel for a second that felt like forever.
The Northern pony reversed out. Then charged forward. Into an ambush. The truckers had flocked to a pickup hitched up on oversized tires. A gun-racked mudder manned by a mudderfucker passing out rifles like he was Robert E Lee.
Franco yanked hard on the reins of his pony, skidded it into an about face. The horse finally regained a grip of the gravel. Charged away as shots unraveled. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
“Get the fuck down!” Franco shouted as he shoved T into the door well. The rear windshield was then blown away as the Stang blew away.
&nbs
p; The following adrenaline-filled fifteen minutes felt like fifteen seconds. Until Franco finally felt safe enough to whip his pony off the road and whip his son’s ass. Franco yanked the door open. Yanked T out. “How fuckin stupid are you!”
“I saved your life! You could’ve died!”
“You coulda died!”
“Relax, alright? I’m ready for this shit.”
Franco, toe to toe with T, was caught off guard by the comment. “Dafuck…” Franco wrinkled his face. T’s comment was a round-one hook that had woken him up. He gathered himself. Crouched down. Let his guard down. Eye to eye with T. “You think I taught you to fight to be tough with these?” Franco motioned to his fists. “I taught you to fight to be tough up here.” Franco motioned to his head. “You wanna be a real tough guy? That’s where it’s really hard to be tough.”
Visions ran through the young Yankee’s head. Visions of another Yankee. The mentally toughest person he knew. Number two. Jeter. His flip throw. His stadium dive. His game-winning World Series home run at 12:04 in the morning. In front of the home crowd in mourning. Doing his part, Mr. November, to heal the events of September. Because nothing, not even 9/11, was gonna hold New York back. And TJ suddenly felt like nothing was gonna hold him back either. Franco had just countered with a hook that woke TJ up as well. “I got it.”
Franco looked into his son’s eyes. He’d concede, in part, that the high noon sun might explain it. But he could also see that the mysterious light inside was on. The one that lingered somewhere behind his boy’s big browns. The one he’d see emerging from the infant’s eyes when he rocked him to sleep. The one he’d see on the Seaside boardwalk as the rides lit up the night something special. The one he’d see when he taught the tyke to ride his bike. The one he’d see when his boy slapped a hit then slapped Dad five at first. The one Franco hadn’t seen in years. But there they were once again. On the side of the Garden State Parkway. Next to a shot-out Mustang. His boy’s eyes amber against amber waves of marsh. New Jersey the Beautiful.